


Only the Good Die Young

by arthur_177



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-17
Updated: 2012-08-17
Packaged: 2017-11-12 08:35:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arthur_177/pseuds/arthur_177
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint, of all people, teaches Steve how to dance - in the Avengers Tower's kitchen, to Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young. It's about as bittersweet as the song implies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only the Good Die Young

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fill for the Avengers Kinkmeme Prompt: "Steve/Any, Dancing Lessons set to Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young". It has Steve/Clint dancing, but it's gen, apart from the general implications and the epilogueish coda which have one-sided or implied pre-slash Clint/Coulson. This is not a fix-it, so warning for mood appropriate to the movie aftermath as well as previous major character death.

Steve has heard it all before. “You're from the 40s, and you can't dance?” and all variations thereof, together with all the variations of disbelief, mocking and pity. He's acquired his repertoire of suitable replies, all polite and vague enough to hide the fact that he'd really have liked that dance he first enlisted and then froze himself out of. So when Barton turns up the volume of the song he's been listening to with a soft smile full of memories [and a glimpse of eyes too bright] Steve isn't sure he deserved to be witness to and the ensuing [deliberately, falsely cheerful] conversation somehow inevitably reaches this part, he expects a lot of things. Barton isn't as predictably needling as Stark, but he has a sharp enough tongue of himself. Steve trusts them all with his life, but he is not quite sure if he trusts them with much else yet. He certainly doesn't trust them to understand.

So when he tells Barton that no, he can't actually dance and never really got around to trying it either, and patiently waits for the mockery, he has to admit that he's surprised when Barton is quiet for a long moment and then says, too lightly, “Well, guess someone's got to teach you, then. C'mere”. He's wearing his SHIELD uniform without the jacket and without boots or socks, which is as domestic as Steve supposes Agents ever get, and there is something so bizarre, so out of place, so compelling about the whole situation that when Barton points the remote at the stereo to put the same song on loop with his right hand and beckons him over with his left in the way he's done countless times during sparring, it does not occur to him to decline.

The style of the music is something close enough to what Steve is familiar with to be comforting, and Barton's hands are dry and warm and as calm and precise when leading as they are when shooting. He provides a running commentary when necessary, telling Steve how to hold himself, what to do with his feet, warning him when Clint is going to do a turn, telling him to watch his back, there's a chair at his six, as if they were sparring. It's not what Steve imagined dancing to be like at all, but then Steve hadn't imagined his first dance to be in 2012 to music whose composer wouldn't be born for decades when he had time to think about dancing. He'd also imagined that it would be with a woman. But Barton isn't pushing that issue by deliberately being clingy as someone like Stark might have done, and he keeps a bit more distance than Steve supposes one normally does, and once he has the basic steps down Barton nods approvingly and tells him that it's none of his business to assume whom he wants to dance with, but in case it's with more traditionally inclined girls he's now going to switches position to teach him how to lead.

By the time Bruce walks in on them, Steve has figured out the basics well enough so he can concentrate on things other than his feet and has the lyrics memorized. He lets go of Barton before he remembers that Banner isn't the type to judge him for catching him dancing. Similarly Steve isn't the type to judge Banner for catching him smiling in that faraway heartbroken way that seems to dominate smiles these days. Banner nods at them, refills the coffee mug Stark gave him for his birthday ['You wouldn't like me when I'm decaffeinated', it says. Banner had laughed, openly, happily, and Steve had to excuse himself for a moment because it'd only then hit him how little honest laughter there had been of late], and leaves again. By the time he is gone, Barton has switched the stereo to some radio station playing meaningless songs, picking up the weapon specifications report he'd been reading before [Barton writes, reads and edits reports now. Three months ago Coulson would have put him in a cell until they'd figured out what had possessed or replaced him. But that was three months ago.]. Steve doesn't know what to say, so he sticks to a simple “Thanks”. “You're welcome”, Barton says with too much sincerity; then he grabs the report and a bottle of soda from the fridge and says “Hey, I've got to re-do this, they made a mess of the forms. Let me know if you want me to annoy Pepper or Tony into continuing the lessons, yeah?” “Sure. Thanks.” He still doesn't know what to say, so he tries for humour. “You know, I didn't really expect to learn dancing at my age to music like that with a guy in a kitchen.” Barton pauses, or freezes, Steve isn't quite sure. Steve isn't sure if he wants to be sure. “Yeah, well. Neither did I, but it happened. Granted, I was a bit younger than 70 and the kitchen wasn't this flash, but I figured it worked out well enough to continue the tradition.” Barton doesn't look at him while he speaks. “See you around, Cap.”

Steve is slowly learning to admire his fellow Avengers for all the qualities they have that are not directly related to being Avengers. He admires Clint Barton for his easy humour and ability to be quiet when necessary, and, as of now, also for his skills as a dancing instructor to recently rediscovered relics from the 40s. He also, as of now, admires him for being able to listen to a loop of a too upbeat song about the good dying young after the good who taught Barton himself to dance to this song did just that a little less than three months ago. They've told Steve about all those things psychology does nowadays, all the endless lists and qualifications that sound more restricting and useless than those the Army had back in his days to keep people like him out. He reckons that if Barton can teach him to dance with a soft smile, that means there is acceptance in there somewhere.

He keeps a small tin box in his room for memories. It contains a couple of postcard, an old poster, ticket stamps and newspaper clippings [too many of them obituaries], the odd reminder of his military days, and an envelope with a piece of paper and a set of cards. He adds things to the paper whenever he finds them to remind himself that there was so much more than the neat suit and a slightly awkward infatuation which were all he got to know. He writes 'and piano' in the line next to 'liked cello music' and 'good dancer/dancing instructor' at the bottom of the list. When he puts the envelope back into the box, he thinks that Coulson would have been (secretly) thrilled (and maybe a little bit jealous) when hearing of the dancing lesson.

He sleeps easy that night.

[SHIELD Agents get funerals, sometimes, but they don't get burials. There is DNA evidence and danger of discovery and the potential of HYDRA reviving the dead, or something like that. It's in a file. Clint has read and forgotten most of it, because it was in a time when he didn't read files.

Instead, they get cold storage. Normally it's classified where. What is also normally classified is the fact that Director Fury has in fact a heart, which is why Clint knows something he is at least three levels of security clearance too low down the food chain to know. He also knows the guard rotation, and the codes to the security systems, and the exit and entry points to the ventilation shafts.

He brings gloves, a jacket and sometimes a cup of tea ('With being a great handler comes being burdened with one hell of an annoying asset', the mug says. It was after Berlin, after everything had been such an awful mess that he'd made it his mission to make Coulson smile just so he had something, anything else to focus on. Coulson had given Clint a pointed look for that one, and he'd figured out that it'd been worth a shot. And then Coulson had started laughing, hugged him [tightly to say everything unspoken, briefly for them both to pretend that, after Berlin, they didn't need to hold on for dear life to continue] told him that he'd be the end of him and should go back to work. That was the first time Coulson had laughed about something Barton had done, the first time he'd hugged Clint, and the first time Clint could sleep again after Berlin). Cold storage is just that, and Clint can see his breath condense in the air. The ventilation is humming quietly. He perches on top of the row of cupboards across from 49-207-B and imagines something that is not a silver metal slab and an ice-cold body with scars from divine open-heart surgery.

Clint Barton tells Phil Coulson about the way R&D still can't do weapons forms properly, that he's finally learned to spell 'appropriately' and 'achievement' with the correct number of consonants in the correct places without Coulson telling him so in red exasperated script across his report, and that he'd taught Captain America to dance to Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young. He tells him a lot about that latter bit, with gestures and laughter in his eyes and 'you should have seen it, sir, we must have been quite a sight. You'd probably have been jealous'. He winks at the slab through the tears as years of experience show him the decidedly unimpressed facial expression, the way the corner of Coulson's mouth twitches when he tries to determine how scathing a reply whatever Clint has done now deserves, the way he says – said - 'Barton' and sometimes 'Agent Barton', and one time 'Clint, dammit, talk to me'. He tells Coulson about that thing Stark did with the refrigerator in Banner's lab and how Stark fell off his chair when Tasha told him she had a thing with Pepper (which she didn't, but him and Pepper had gotten a nice bottle of single malt out of that bet) until his voice stops being so damn obvious about everything. He doesn't tell Coulson that he misses him, that he loved him, probably, and wishes he'd gotten around to telling him, and that he'd like to have called him Phil one day, if just once, and not to mess with him. He talks away, like he always did, and he doesn't think about the fact that his memory of a fond but sharp 'cut the chatter, Barton' is all that he'll ever get in response now. He stays until his hands are stiff and he is shivering and in danger of hypothermia. “And so much for the Barton report for today. See you tomorrow, sir.”

Some days, he catches himself before he says “Don't work too long, it'll be the death of you.”]


End file.
